216 THE COMPLETE FARMER 



water, as the sailors term it, that garden posts begin to de- 

 cay. My reason for recommending ashes is, that I have fre- 

 quently found pieces of board, hoops, and strives buried under 

 hea^ s of leached ashes, which had lain there many years, 

 and were quite as sound as when first buried. No doubt 

 miry of your readers have noticed the same, in removing 

 ol^' ash heaps near potash works.' 



HEDGES. In some soils, situations, and circumstances 

 hedge fences will be found most advisable and economical. 

 The following remarks on this subject, by the Hon. John 

 Lowell, were published in the New England Farmer, vol. x. 

 p. 339. 



' It is not my intention to recommend live hedges for this 

 rocky part of the United States. Our own stones furnish 

 the best divisions we could ask for or desire ; and on most 

 farms the removal of them from the soil would be economi- 

 cal, and the placing them as partitions for fields is the cheap- 

 est and most natural mode of disposing of them. Still, in 

 New England, there are extensive tracts of country of allu- 

 vial or diluvial soil in which no rocks arc found, and in 

 which a stone wall could not be obtained without great ex- 

 pense. Such is the state of the greater part of the old colo- 

 ny below Plymouth, and of some parts of the county of 

 Middlesex. But wherever wood fences are required it may 

 be useful to substitute live hedges. The question is, what 

 has been our experience as to the comparative value of the 

 various plants employed in New England for live hedges ? 

 In the remarks which follow, I beg it may be understood, 

 that I do not intend to oppose the opinions expressed by a 

 learned and judicious horticulturist, judge Buel; nor those 

 expressed by practical gentlemen at the south ; but simoly 

 the results of my own personal experience and observation, 

 during the last eighteen years, since the subject of live 

 hedges attracted the attention of our cultivators. Nothing 

 which I may say can in any degree impeach the correctness 

 of their statements, because the causes of the failure of cer- 

 tain plants with us may have been entirely local. This 

 would not appear remarkable, when we consider that the lo- 

 cust {robinia pseudocacia) is absolutely kiterdicted to us, 

 while it is the favorite and one of the most valuable trees 

 of the south. 



